April 2010 Indie Next List

“Ghosts, seances, and an unsolved murder are brought together on a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes. Hallie James, who thought her mother died in a fire decades earlier, has discovered she was alive--until recently. Hallie's father's last words in answer to why he staged their deaths were, 'I had to save my little girl.' From what or whom? A gothic thriller with a modern twist.”
— Karen Briggs, Great Northern Books and Hobbies, Oscoda, MI
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Description

When a mysterious letter lands in Hallie James's mailbox, her life is turned upside-down. Raised by a loving father, Hallie was told that her mother had died in a fire. But the letter makes it clear that Madlyn Crane died very recently. Why would Hallie's father have taken her away from Madlyn; What really happened to her family thirty years ago? In search of answers, Hallie travels to the place where her mother lived, a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes. The stiff islanders fix her first with icy stares and then unabashed amazement as they recognize why she looks so familiar. Hallie quickly realizes her family's dark secrets are enmeshed in the history of this strange place. Her mother's grand Victorian house has been bequeathed to Hallie, and though she loves this ancestral home, she can't shake the feeling that strange things are happening there.